Pretty
by stillwaiting83
Summary: Angie and I were inseperable from day one. But life is no fairytale, and no love, whether it be friendship or romance, lasts forever.
1. Chapter 1

Somebody to lean on

"_There is nothing we like to see so much as the gleam of pleasure in a person's eye when he feels that we have sympathized with him, understood him. At these moments something fine and spiritual happens between two friends. These are the moments worth living." _

_- Don Marquis_

When I was 17, I met Angie.

Angie was beautiful and spunky. Well, maybe more bitchy than spunky. But she was magic, and we were chemistry in motion. From the moment we met, there was a force beyond our control that kept us next to each other, drawn to each other, inseparable. I don't remember exactly how we came to be the good friends that we eventually became, but I remember that I didn't like her at first. But that didn't stop me from wanting to explore her.

She was loud. She farted in front of people, she was brash, exploited people's flaws, and always saw the glass as half-empty. But something about her was alive, brimming over with adventure and promise and trouble. At 17, trouble and adventure lures you in. Friends are the people you get into trouble with, and I never really had anyone at all, let alone someone to befriend or love. The thought of having someone that could possibly be my partner in crime intrigued me.

And Angie was funny. Not in the traditional way, not like Robin Williams funny. She wouldn't have starred her own sitcom or anything. But she was funny in the sense that you would think, "that's so _wrong_!" and then laugh until you peed a little.

Then she could pick up the mess you made and cook you dinner. She could be your mother and your sister, with nothing but your very best interest at heart, and then pass you the vodka. She could love you or hate you with equal amounts of passion, and you'd never know the difference. No one escaped her judgmental eye. But there was just something about this girl that had me star struck. Being around her was akin to being near Brad Pitt, or Buddy Mayes. Everyone was in her shadow. She was always a little wittier, a little bit better looking, a little bit thinner than the girl standing next to her. She could always sell you on the idea a little bit harder than the person standing next to her. And the boys were always picking up their jaws after she walked past. It was like a tornado coming through. You didn't quite know what just happened, but it was scary and fun at the same time. She made you want to stand a little straighter, wear a little more perfume, dance a little better. I looked good in her shadow.

We ran into each other a few times, and within a month we were living together. I don't know why she liked me - I was the opposite of her. I was demure and trusting. She was obnoxious and skeptical. I enjoyed reading, she preferred reality tv. She was short and shaped like an hourglass, voluptuous and thick in all the right places - I was tall and skinny and shaped like a thirteen year old boy. I didn't have anything in any of the right places. Her skin was dark, mine was oh so white. Her hair was short and dark, mine was long and blonde. I smoked cigarettes, and she hated them with a passion. My smoking was limited to the balcony, come heat, snow, hurricane - she hated it, and I kind of liked it that I did something that annoyed _her_.

I was responsible and sensible, she was impulsive and argumentative.

But I believe there were similarities, and even the smallest of them held us together like glue.

Angie poured her and myself a cup of coffee, heavy on the cream and sugar, and we sat on the balcony of her apartment at midnight, soaking in the summer heat and humidity that soaked through our tank tops and the back of our necks. The silence was pleasant. It lasted all of two minutes when Angie started going on about some movie she wanted to see or thing she wanted to do the next day. I "mm hmm'ed" at all the right places, but my mind had drifted elsewhere. I had an idea, but it was ludicrous.

"Let's take a bath." Angie's face seemed to drop for a moment, and I laughed. I imagined what she was thinking. _Oh no, I've befriended a lesbian, I've been tricked._

"Remember when we were kids, when you would take baths with your little girlfriends when they spent the night? Putting bikinis on your Barbie dolls and slinging bubbles at each other. I miss that."

Angie seemed to mull it over for a few seconds, then shrugged a little and said _sure_.

I ran the bathwater, no bubbles.

We both got naked, as if we had seen each other naked hundreds of times. It wasn't awkward or strange. We simply disrobed and argued over the bathwater's temperature. There we were, naked, standing in the middle of a bathroom with the air sticky with sweat, arguing whether the water was too hot or too cold. A matter of taste, she called it.

Then something happened. Something I will never forget. Somewhere between small talk and soaking, a conversation took place. We talked until there was nothing left. We talked about our parents, our failed childhoods, our whole lives from start to finish. We admitted things you're never supposed to say out loud. We admitted to never being in real love, to lost loves, to "what ifs". We cried. We sat in silence for extended periods of time, saying nothing but understanding each other completely. That was the thing we learned over time about our "talks". We could say nothing at all and it was okay. Sometimes we just didn't have to.

I remember her curling her legs up to her chest, talking now into her knees, as if they had tiny microphones. I found myself doing the same. We had forgotten our nakedness, in every sense of the word. The water had gone cold by then, but we didn't even notice. She spilled out her soul into that bathwater, letting go of secrets I don't think she even knew she had, and I did too. And I felt like a chain had been welded from my heart to hers. We were connected for life. We were the same, me and her. As different as we appeared on the outside, we were the same exact person.

After what seemed like hours, we emerged, soaked and freezing. We weren't friends anymore. We were sisters now. We knew each other's deepest darkest secrets, and we trusted each other completely. We had crossed some kind of line. I don't know what it was, but it felt like nothing I'd ever experienced before. We had bonded. I felt love for her, and she felt love for me. I'd never had that before. It was lovely.


	2. Chapter 2

Fat

"_Don't believe your friends when they ask you to be honest with them. All they really want is to be maintained in the good opinion they have of themselves."_

_- Albert Camus_

The next morning, we found ourselves sleeping in the same bed in her three bedroom apartment, my leg slung over her right hip as she faced away from me. Total comfort and mental exhaustion had crept right in and swept us into a blissful sleep.

We found ourselves in a routine. Mondays I would cook homemade meals - baked chicken, lasagna, hamburger egg rolls - and we would eat in silence at the dinner table, enjoying each other's company. The rest of the week was hit or miss dinner-wise. Sometimes it was takeout and movies until the wee hours of the morning, sometimes it was an expedition to little mom and pop restaurants and ordering everything on the menu because we simply couldn't decide.

We spent our days on the beach, soaking in the sun and initiating skin cancer. We spent our evenings hosting dinner parties, drinking wine and falling over drunk, laughing at our own stupidity. We drank coffee every night at midnight, extra sugar, extra cream. We smoked pot in the living room and laughed for no reason at all. We shopped in the same boutique at the mall every Saturday, spending money we couldn't afford on clothes we didn't need. She always seemed to con me into buying something I didn't feel comfortable wearing just to watch me squirm.

We danced horribly on the coffee table, in the car everywhere we went, and even in the shower, while one of us sat on the toilet lid, singing just as badly. We even held hands sometimes. It was an intimacy I don't think either one of us was ready for, but were both completely oblivious to it when it came.

We were spectacular, and everyone knew it. Their jealousy wasn't easily hidden, and we loved every second. We had what everyone always wants, what people need desperately - a friend. We had a true blue, over the moon, worthy of the world, attached-at-the-hip friendship.

When I turned eighteen, Angie didn't throw me a party. Instead, she called up a friend and procured an at-home tattoo party, sans the party guests. I got a cherry blossom on my lower belly where it could easily be hidden by a bathing suit, and she got a flower scroll tattooed around her ankle. True to form, Angie became a drama queen. She flinched and squeezed my hand tightly, as if my hand could take away the pain. I did the same, minus the dramatics. Although on more than one occasion, I felt lightheaded and had to stop for a moment until the nausea subsided. That's the way I handle my pain - my guts defy me and I feel like my whole body is going to reject the pain through my digestive tract.

An hour later, my mother called me.

"What do you want?" I spewed, "And how did you get this number?" My heart leapt, and I felt that feeling in the pit of my stomach when you know the rage is creeping in. All I remember is her saying something about damage. Damage I had caused, it was all my fault. Something about never coming around again, never harassing her again. Harassing her? When had I so much as given her a second thought? This was part of the reason I didn't talk to her. She was delusional.

"You really called just to say that? Well guess what? You didn't have to waste your precious fucking time to give me a call. You're a piece of shit. Don't ever call me again." And I hung up on her.

It would be the last conversation I would ever have with my mother.

For two days I cried over that phone call, and Angie never pressed me for information. She knew. And for two days, she didn't bother to wake me up early, to ask me to make dinner. We didn't go shopping or go to the beach. She handed me zanex and rubbed my hair until I drifted off to sleep. She wasn't big on words in this type of situation, so she did what she knew. She drugged me up and let me sleep. And after a few days I was okay. I loved her for that. I didn't have to explain myself. She had been there, done that, and talking about it would only take longer. She wanted me well, and well I got. After the depression had passed, I sat down and wrote my mother a letter. I never had any intention of ever sending it to her, and I never did.

_I just wanted you to know that from this day forward you will never hurt me again. Not only because I refuse to accept your hateful letters or phone calls, but because from this day forward I will never think of you again. You won't even be a memory. You'll be a bad dream, not even a passing thought. You will never terrorize me again from this day until the day I die. I dance, mom. I dance every single day, no thanks to you. Your days of ruining me are over._

On the third day, Angie jumped into the bed with a fever, rustling the sheets and bouncing the mattress into the wall.

"Wake up!"

I could see light through the slit of my eye, and I didn't like what I saw. It was daytime, and that meant it was beach time.

"Here," she said, handing me a little orange pill shaped like a football. I swallowed it without water, without question. "Now we're going to the beach. So get up."

It turns out there was a thunderstorm that day, and our beach outing was cancelled. But my appetite had returned, so we went to a little seafood place down the street from our usual hangout and sat in the very last booth. Rachel was our waitress. Rachel's thighs rubbed together when she sauntered over to our table. Rachel had a thick southern accent and thin brown hair. She was fifty pounds overweight and sweaty. When she asked us what we wanted to drink, we both turned our noses up and left. We weren't worried that we would look vain or shallow. There was no debate about it, no conferring with the other about our decision. We simply left. And neither of us had to do any explaining.

"Oh God, she was _fat_" Angie said, the word _fat_ sticking out of her mouth like something was too big to fit. Like it had disease. Angie had her own little personal demons, her own little paranoid _things_. But this was one we shared. I had always had a _thing_ against fat people, like it was something you could prevent, something you could catch. Like AIDS.

Instead, we went to McDonald's and went straight through the drive-thru, eating in the parking lot on the hood of her honda. While we ate the food of fat people, we bad-mouthed them and talked about how we planned on preventing obesity ourselves. Certainly by not eating this shit, we said. By working out, by eating healthy. We won't be like that. We can _not_ catch that _thing. _


End file.
